When I was a child in the 1960s, I was taught that the polite term was "colored". I remember my 1974 World Book Encyclopedia still using the term "Negro".
Captain Pike's weird comment about "women on the bridge"
- Thread starter Lance
- Start date
- Status
When I was a child in the 1960s, I was taught that the polite term was "colored". I remember my 1974 World Book Encyclopedia still using the term "Negro".
Unfortunately, that was true at one time. In order to be taken seriously in business or in a 'traditional male' role , a woman had to think like a man, act like a man and she couldn't be 'too pretty'. I remember one woman who was a beautiful blonde (she looked like Christie Brinkley) who happened to be a brain surgeon. No one would take her seriously so she dyed her hair. That still makes me mad when I think about it.
I wonder why people insist on doing the wrong thing first.
Wrong in what way? It's all a matter of fashion, like using the word "Asian" instead of "Oriental." There's nothing wrong with the latter term; it just went out of style.
Some words are obviously meant to offend.
None of those words -- colored, Negro, black, African-American, oriental -- started out as meant to offend.
Language like that was not meant to "offend", it was meant to cement and confirm a particular hierarchy as natural and normal.
I find that offensive.
Sure and we all should. But the intention of the language wasn't to offend but to normalise a pecking order where the majoritarian culture got to lord it over the rest.
So were apartheid and the labor camps.
British?
Maybe.
Because she's the only one who seemed to react to his comment/even hear him?
There comes a certain point where some people own their slurs and wear them as a badge of honor among themselves. And frankly, you can turn just about any word into an insult if you want. It's all in how you say it. Calling someone "darling" could just as easily be an invective as a term of endearment. Alternately, you could call somebody a seemingly benign name that brings up bad/good memories for them, such as if a person who hurt them called them that, or someone they loved used to call them that and they miss them so much.
As a black female I find that a weird description since I don't consider Caucasian folks translucent
The Britons were defeated by the Anglo Saxons then the Normans came along.....He's an Afro-Briton, duh...
An immigrant
I was trying to find an equivalent term to "American". According to the dictionary, Briton refers to an inhabitant of Great Britain, especially England. What term should I have used?
It was meant to affirm Caucasians as the default humans who need no descriptions apart from Homo Sapien.....
- Status
Similar threads
